Infinity War/S4NTA's perspective

This article is taken almost word-for-word from S4NTA's Reddit comment.

High tensions and skirmishes in Mount Augusta

Rhodesia attacks MtA Vault, Mir breaks Rhodesian bunker causing 'the lawsuit from hell', HJE assisting/housing banned VPNers, _TheJKH_ bombing the Rhodesia bunker, Gregy solo attacking Pinkerton, failed diplomacy, skirmishes between NATO and Mir, finally followed by NATO breaking Mir's bunker.

Thomasih was a huge part of this starting drama. He was a citizen of HJE and therefore a NATO member. He was one of their most active players throughout the war. It was later revealed over a year later that Thomasih was Poortea on a VPN (who was permanently banned for a long list of reasons), he had successfully created a fake persona and was not caught for about two years.

Mirian Military Success

Pearling of centipede and Hangoverd, 1st Siege of Pinkerton, Two Sieges of Sempiternal and key pearls acquired during that such as Doommad (Valyria leader) and Ahri. Much of this success was due to war/PvP experience and extensive snitch networks placed by Mir, which also leads to the next point, the Hallow campaign. Key point here being the large initial morale boost for Mir.

The Hallow Campaign (PAX Mir begins)

Sacking the city, sieging the vault daily, getting 6 rings in with the intent of pearling NATO members. Core members were pearled such as Daddo, Bruno, SilentCreeper/DontMindMe, as well as others like Aimuari.

Key point: Taking the fight directly to NATO main land and gaining even more pearls and morale until Mir ran out of steam, due to a lack of consistent manpower partly due to S4NTA's absence not having a PC at the time.

Withdrawal of Various Nations from the NATO alliance

In the following months after the Hallow campaign, Valyria, Columbia, and Annywyn left NATO and surrendered to Mir. Tel Aviv also ended their involvement after the pearling of Hangoverd. This left HJE, Hallow, and Polska as the remaining core members of the alliance.

Period of paranoia (for lack of a better term)

This I consider the following ~7-8 months after the Hallow Campaign, where the action of the war was spread quite thin. Quite a few skirmishes happened during this time, including the break of Rhodesia vault among other things. Generally however, this was a fairly minor time during the war where nonetheless both sides had to be constantly vigilant for months ready to react to situations that arose.

NATO would eventually recapture Pinkerton and Columbia, extending their influence back over those regions as Mir became inactive. Mir had accomplished many of its goals before this and felt they did not have a reason to continue their campaigns as no Mirian had yet been pearled and Mir had many (16) NATO pearls, but the war was far from over even now, more than half a year into it.

Skirmishes were had across the map, from Polska to Mir, where NATO had been setting up tunnels and bunkers to attack the Mirian home land. There were also various PR campaigns throughout this time and discussions with other nations from both sides trying to convince outsiders to either join their cause or not join the other side. As a result of these campaigns the UNC (prominent alliance of the time) nearly joined the war on Mir's side but after it was put to a vote internally, they ultimately did not.

The Rise of Ransackistan

SPQR gets obby bombed by a group of NATO members and others, partly due to past events in the SPQR rail crisis. Following the SPQR bombing, Parker and Rixxlon created Ransackistan, an HCF group and a vault built within HJE land. The players building the vault were seen on HJE's own snitches, though Mir never got around to checking out the area (Mir had access to their snitches for a long time). They had many HCFers join at this time and this was basically an HCF invasion of it's own. They seemed to get a few new HCF pvpers to join them every day.

They had a lot of people and obby bombed many towns, receiving tangential assistance from NATO as a group, and direct assistance from a few NATO members. As said, many active towns were obby bombed which garnered support for Mir and distrust for NATO. During the bombings, Lodish was pearled and taken to the Ransackistan vault making it's existence known. It was sizable with ~6+ rings, a trench, and sky defenses.

An influx of new players were joining and during this time our side had bots to automatically check if new players were from Lunar or other popular pvp servers, if they had a decent history on those servers and headed towards NATO/Ransackistan land many were pearled. The vast majority were actually HCFers going to join Ransackistan but one or two weren't which led to bad PR for the coalition.

Both Mir and a newly formed coalition of many nations across called the "Ok Bomber Coalition" built bunkers nearby the Ransackistan vault to attack it. Skirmishes took place daily for a week, with various coalition players getting pearled and put into the Ransackistan vault, and a few HCF logon pvpers pearled as well.

NATO decided to stay out of the war despite their groups tangential involvement, and a few players explicit involvement (such as MC/Vespasian, but it was not known at first as he was on an alt). However, while we weren't too vocal we knew they were involved in some way, as well as Corvus due to overlap of Corvus/Ransackistan members and direct tunnels from Ransackistan to Corvus. Note: Varkonia was already in a separate war against Corvus at the time.

Eventually, parker was pearled due to a disconnection, and two other higher up members of Ransackistan were pearled in the Nevrast swamp. The Ransackistan vault was soon broken after a Mir Team 6 Probe attack turned into a serious one. The same would happen to Corvus later.

The Laconia Theatre

After the Ransackistan drama, the Entente alliance got into conflict with the LSD alliance. Skirmishes took place at the LSD vault and many Laconians (part of LSD) were pearled. Entente had launched some attacks against Laconia, and Laconia against Entente, where no killing blows were delivered, but Entente had a large pearl advantage. Eventually Mir fully got involved and helped Entente fight Laconia, partly due to some NATO members helping Laconia (though not fully committing, which was likely a mistake). Many more Laconian pearls were secured during a series of ground attacks largely conducted by Hjaltland and Mir. One such attack Laconia's vault was almost fully pierced, when Ez2Clutch's internet disconnected and he was pearled by bowfire whilst on an archer position. This was a large blow to Mir, it was the first pearl they had lost throughout the entire war so far, after a year of fighting in an intensive trap meta. While it was only one pearl, Mir does not have many players and relied on quality of their members so one player lost was a huge hit to morale. Mir offered making peace with Laconia and giving up their attacks, for the freedom of Ez2Clutch which was declined. NATO moved in during the night with a 1x1 skybridge and successfully transferred Clutch's pearl out from Laconia thousands of blocks away to HJE vault. This was done despite efforts and bots broadcasting Ez2Clutch's pearl throughout the night, not enough players were online at the time to contest it. Later, another account was seen in the north ocean of the Laconian sea, where a massive battle between Entente and Mir Vs. NATO and Laconia took place, resulting in many NATO pearls being lost, including essentially half of the 'recharge' raider group from 2.0. The next day the remaining rings of Laconia Vault were skybridged and taken over, giving Entente/Mir full control, and Mt Doom was sacked.

The Coalition fully emerges, and NATO's second wind

After the Ransackistan and Laconia events, a much larger coalition formed to fight NATO. After the conflicts of Ransackistan, and Laconia, the remnants of these nations went to join NATO. Corvus also joined NATO around this time. This drastically increased NATO's numbers. Notably, important players such as Zrain, Reiko (after being unbanned), and Crackerjack helped revitalize their military. A large group of players/pvpers from a different server (Geographica) also joined at this time, who would eventually join and side with NATO. This was essentially the second HCF invasion that directly helped NATO during this war, this time they directly joined forces. Despite all this, Mir got much more support as well, with the UDF, and Entente formally joining them in the war, as well as Columbia and Valyria joining back into the war this time on Mir's (The Coalition's) side. Together the coalition broke Pinkerton and Corvus vaults.

The Columbian Theatre

NATO was once again pushed back to their main territories of Hallow and HJE after Pinkerton was recaptured by the coalition and Corvus was destroyed. Despite the coalition success, NATO had just gained 10-20+ pvpers whilst much of the coalition joining Mir were not PVP savy, and Clutch/Walkers were now pearled. This led to NATO attacking Valyria's Vault, the crucible. Due to an insider, the attack was fairly successful, however once a formidable defense was gathered NATO was pushed back and lost one of their best pvpers from Geographica during the fighting. This led to weeks of constant fighting, with the coalition on the backfoot being heavily outnumbered in terms of skilled pvpers. Most of the Coalition was very demotivated during this time. The Entente stayed out of the PvP for the time being as well as a large portion of Mir. This loss of morale was due largely to two things. The first and obvious one is NATO's resurgence and newly revitalized member base. The second was due to harassment including serious fallacious IRL accusations made against members of the coalition among other things. Many players were banned and unbanned during the span of a few days, and rules were constantly changing. The defenders consisted primarily of players from Valyria/Columbia, Icenia and Mir. NATO led constant attacks from Polska, which was directly south of Valyria, only 500 blocks. The defenders played very carefully due to their disadvantage and as a result of persistent attacks, NATO took over the Valyrian city and completely obby bombed it. It was one of the most severe obby bombings seen in civ history. One tactic NATO successfully used was stealthily breaking city bastions in the sky and underground, before sending in self exiled players with Obby and Stone to grief without any risk. Using exiles at this point was not new, Laconia saw a lot of success using them to defend their vault as well. While Valyria's city was essentially destroyed, the Vault was never successfully attacked despite multiple attempts. NATO also lost one of their important leaders during some of the fighting, Robokaiser. Soon after Robo's pearling, the NATO attacks slowed down, and the coalition decided they would begrudgingly use exiles to their advantage this time - safely skybridging Polska city bastions before sending down self exiled players to disable and destroy military infrastructure, where NATO was finally pushed out of Polska.

The Final Blows

A few months after the events of the Columbian theatre, Valyria/Columbia (especially) started to push the rest of the coalition to break the remaining NATO vaults and end the war. They had built a preliminary bunker 1-2K NW of Valyria to do so. Most players did not want to assault the NATO vaults because of the immense time investment required to break them. Hallow vault was a strong 30 rings, and would be triple the size of the previous largest vault ever broken. HJE and Geographica vaults similarly would have broken records on their own. However, people finally wanted to end the war, myself, JKH, and some others logged in and began consolidating resources and built a secure Obby-Ice tunnel from the Valyrian bunker to deep Hallow land, where we built our WindChimeTM skybunker to stage our attack. However, JKH went to the surface trying to get pvp and alerted NATO of the attack. Hastily the rest of the coalition was made aware that we were spotted - and indeed that we were attacking at all. A skybridge was started that night and Hallow was broken within a few days. With the goliath of the Hallow vault out of the way, the coalition was eager to end the war. A month later, after many preparations, snitching, probing, bunker building, and disinformation, we were ready to strike HJE - the biggest remaining NATO stronghold. HJE and Vault 76 were broken on the same day, and the Geographica vault one day later - ending the war.